Lisbon, possibly the oldest city in Europe, goes back in time through very interesting history when it comes to diversity of settlements and the identities they brought and formed, at first Iberian, Greek, Pre-Celtic,….later Roman, replaced by Suebi, Visigoths then Moors,…. all focused around the river of Tagus, the longest river on the Iberian peninsula. A story tells of Odysseus, the Greek mythological hero who after fleeing Troy arrived at Tagus and founded the city. Of course, this story starts and ends within the vast space of imagination. History preaches of many tribes and empires establishing themselves there and one of the most prominent more in the sense of trading than anything else, the Phoenicians called it Puerto Sereno, the “Serene Port”. Indeed that seems to be the prevailing atmosphere of this whole region, maybe facing the fears and Adamastor so early in the Age of Discovery made them realize that serenity is the most powerful of collective human attributes.
Perhaps never before nor since has a color achieved such status. Isn’t it fascinating that humans were marking the territory of dominance and superiority with something as immaterial as color, and it seemed incredibly important among Romans, Greeks and many others who escalated the status of this color and restricted it’s use and availability to royalty alone.
We often think critically of our society as being too excessive in spending and creating status symbols but to produce to produce a sufficient amount of Tyrian purple dye, even for only part of a garment it was necessary to collect 12,000 sea-snails. It is important to note that the intensity of color wouldn’t diminish with time but instead intensify, something even our current technology, or at least mass producing technologies would have difficulty in accomplishing. As it was an item of luxury more valuable than gold, great economy revolved around it and it ran through the veins of the old world not only in a practical sense but also in its imaginary life.
Greeks placed the story of Hercules and Tyrus to be the discovery of Tyrian Purple, namely, when his dog ate the shellfish and his mouth turned brilliant purple, nymth Tyrus whom he loved requested a robe of that same intense color, which he fulfilled as the Mediterranean sea was within easy command for him to collect such a great quantity of status-producing sea-snails.
As for the command of Portugal, even though history goes way beyond Homo Sapiens 400.000 years ago when it was populated by Homo Heidelbergensis, the more recent ancient history claims that Celts inhabited the region in the first millennium BC until the Romans came and were in turn supplanted and replaced by the first of many succeeding empires until the “Age of Discovery” which created sufficient power to propel Portugal into an era of colonial imperialism.
Lisbon, a center of water communication with the world turned into a center of gravity commencing with the 15th and 16th centuries of discoveries. Geography was at the time the most powerful of sciences, equivalent to today’s computer technology. Whole empires depended on the discoveries, brevity, vision and geographical knowledge of their explorers. The octopus head of Portugal spread her tentacles into Asia, South America, Africa and the Atlantic islands but for now we will focus on Lisbon and how it was perceived by two entities visiting from future.